Carnival Corp. will pay $20 million after Princess Cruises, a Carnival subsidiary, admitted to violating the terms of its probation from a 2017 conviction for improper waste disposal.
A court filing submitted on Monday said Carnival released food waste and plastic into the ocean, failed to accurately record waste disposals, created false training records, and secretly examined ships to fix environmental-compliance issues before third-party inspections without reporting its findings to the inspectors.
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Monday's settlement requires Carnival to pay $20 million within seven days, receive additional ship inspections, devote more resources to ensure compliance with its probation, reduce the number of single-use plastic items on its ships, and establish teams to improve waste management. If Carnival does not meet deadlines to revamp its compliance process, it will have to pay additional penalties of $1 million to $10 million a day.
"Carnival Corporation remains committed to environmental excellence and protecting the environment in which we live, work, and travel," a Carnival representative said. "Our aspiration is to leave the places we touch even better than when we first arrived."
In 2017, Princess Cruises pleaded guilty to illegally releasing oil into the ocean and deliberately hiding the practice, and it was ordered to pay $40 million. Carnival has since been on a five-year probation, during which it must allow a third-party inspector to examine its ships.
According to a report from an environmental-compliance inspector, Carnival violated environmental laws in the first year of the probation. The inspector found over 800 violations of its probation between April 2017 and April 2018, though they were accidental and disclosed by Carnival, the Miami Herald reported.
"These issues were unacceptable failures in our processes that were not in accordance with our policies and procedures, and do not reflect the culture we have built at Carnival Corporation and across our nine cruise line brands," a Carnival representative told Business Insider in April. "We have been taking steps to address the improvement areas mentioned in the report, and to build on the positive progress noted by the court-appointed monitor to make sure we are in full compliance moving forward."
Have you worked on a cruise ship? Do you have a story to share? Email this reporter at mmatousek@jkmperu.com.
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